Thesis:

Exploring Emotional Intelligence as a Predictor of Speaking Anxiety among Sabzevari Female Secondary School Learners

The purpose of the study was to explore emotional intelligence as a predictor of speaking anxiety among female secondary school learners in Sabzevar, Iran. To this aim, two quantitative and qualitative approaches were consecutively employed. The main participations were two groups including 183 students who were randomly selected for the quantitative part, and 10 students were selected based on purposive sampling for the qualitative phase of the study who were 10th to 12th female students at diverse private and public high schools in Sabzevar, Iran. NELSON English Language Proficiency Test was used to homogenize the participations. Two questionnaires were used to collect the data in the quantitative approach, Emotional Intelligence Scale (EIS) by Schutte et al. (1998) consisting of 33 sentences that was used to measure the EFL students’ level of emotional intelligence and Public Speaking Class Anxiety Scale (PSCAS) consisting of 14 sentences to measure what caused students' fear of talking in English . A semi-structured interview was designed by the researcher to collect data for the qualitative phase. To analyze the data, the correlation test and the linear regression model were used in the SPSS environment and content analysis for the quantitative and qualitative approaches, respectively. It was concluded that the emotional intelligence within Iranian English language learners can predict speaking anxiety scores among them and Iranian learners change with evaluating and expressing emotions, regulating and controlling emotions and utilizing various abilities (social and self-motivation) to manipulate emotions in order to speak in public.

Keywords: Keywords: Emotional Intelligence, Public speaking, Speaking Anxiety